Robert Stacy McCain (born October 6, 1959) is an American conservative journalist, writer, and blogger. McCain is a former assistant national editor and reporter for The Washington Times and co-author (with Lynn Vincent) of the 2006 book Donkey Cons: Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party. He is proprietor of the blog, The Other McCain.

McCain was born on October 6, 1959[1] in Atlanta, Georgia. He graduated in 1983 from Jacksonville State University in Alabama. His journalism career began with the (now defunct) Cobb News-Chronicle in 1986. He then worked as a sports editor for the Marietta, Georgia-based Neighbor Newspapers, before joining the Calhoun (Ga.) Times as sports editor in September 1987. The Calhoun newspaper is a division of Rome, Georgia-based News Publishing Co.

In 1991, McCain joined the staff of the company's flagship daily newspaper, The Rome News-Tribune, working closely with special projects/editorial page editor Pierre Rene-Noth. Frequently writing about such subjects as education and history, McCain was awarded a George Washington Honor Medal from the conservative Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge for his 1995 series of columns about the National Standards for U.S. History.

McCain joined the staff of The Washington Times in November 1997. In addition to his regular duties as an editor, McCain also contributed numerous by-lined news and feature articles to The Washington Times. He frequently reported on controversial issues in the “culture war,” including stories related to sexuality, education, and history. His writing about communism included feature stories about Joseph McCarthy, The Black Book of Communism, and the obituary of former U.S. Communist Party leader Gus Hall. McCain's reporting on controversies surrounding sexuality included features about Alfred Kinsey, the Jesse Dirkhising murder case, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Judith Levine’s controversial 2002 book, Harmful to Minors.[2]

In 2003, McCain was named editor of the “Culture, Etc.” page of The Washington Times, which appears on Page A2 of the newspaper Monday through Friday. Over the years, McCain interviewed many prominent authors and personalities.

McCain lives on the Atlantic Seaboard with his wife. They have six children, whom they homeschooled.[13] He is a Baptist, and has remarked, "I am a poor excuse for a Christian, but I really do have a deep faith in God".[13]

McCain frequently derides Senator John McCain as "Crazy Cousin John". The distant kinship is based on a common ancestor in South Carolina listed in the 1790 Census.[14]

McCain was once a Democrat, but now supports conservative Republicans; he has said that "anything that is good for the Democratic Party is bad for America, and vice versa."[13] He pointed to reading back issues of The Freeman, a libertarian magazine, through the mid-1990s, to explain his political conversion. McCain now identifies himself as a supporter of Austrian economic theory in the vein of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. He has come to believe that government imposition of broader social goals such as "social justice" cannot work out as a practical matter. He also calls himself "profoundly skeptical of radical notions of moral and political progress" in social issues, citing Edmund Burke as an influence.[13]

McCain said in March 2010 that he disagreed with the invasion of Iraq and wanted to express his criticism publicly at the time, but he could not do so since his supervisors and colleagues at The Washington Times did not approve. He remarked that "Any way you look at it, war is a very bad thing," while adding "but losing a war is worse" [italics in the original].[13]

Mediaite's Tommy Christopher once took McCain to task for appearing to excuse date rape when, in a blog post, McCain wrote about promiscuity among women: "Listen up, sweetheart: You buy the ticket, you take the ride." After indignation broke out among both liberal and conservative defenders of women, Christopher confronted McCain on-camera at the CPAC conference in March 2011, seeking clarity. McCain conceded the point, explained why he had been skeptical of a widely publicized date-rape accusation (against Julian Assange) and repeated after Christopher: "No means no; stop means stop." Writing about this encounter, Christopher remarked that "McCain still holds many opinions that I find objectionable, but I also think that [the video] places the 'character' that is RS McCain into a context that simply reading him does not."